Many scholars suggest that
recent major science education initiatives apparently
tied to intense economic competitiveness and growth
have prioritized education about ‘products’ (e.g.,
laws, theories, innovations) and skills (e.g.,
experimentation) of fields of science and technology.
Such initiatives also, apparently, tend to avoid
research findings from fields of humanities and social
sciences that frequently link, more or less directly,
fields of science and technology with many
often-controversial harms for individuals, societies
and environments. Cited as particularly problematic
among humanity’s many challenges is devastation from
climate change associated with humans’ uses of
petroleum-fuelled technologies. Over about the last
five decades, however, science education scholars have
been conducting research that may help educate
students about ‘science-in-context’ (SinC)
conceptions, perspectives, skills, etc. regarding
controversial harms like those mentioned above. In
this review article, we analyze summaries provided
here by four prominent scholars in their respective
SinC fields; that is, about: Science, Technology,
Society and Environment (STSE) relationships,
Socially-Acute Questions (SAQ) and Socioscientific
Issues (SSI). Based on extended experiences by the
authors here with aspects of the three SinC fields, we
suggest that, despite some niche differences in
ontological, epistemological and axiological positions
of scholarship among them, their congruences perhaps
offer hope to those wanting to provide students with
more holistic and critical conceptions of associations
of fields of science and technology with many of
humanity’s numerous personal, social and environmental
threats that students may, in turn, use to contribute
to a more just and environmentally sound world.